Transparency and trust in behaviour change technologies

Behavior change technologies such as wearable fitness monitors are widely used to track and influence people. We often speak of trusting/ distrusting such technologies, but does this casual notion correspond to a genuine and scientifically interesting concept of trust? In this paper I consider three arguments for a positive answer. First, a notion of trust in technology is useful for explaining why and how we rely on behavior change technologies. Second, trust makes a significant difference to our normative judgments regarding privacy and the requirement of transparency as applied to data-intensive technologies. When we share personal information trustingly as part of a technology-mediated service (here involving coaching or motivational encouragement), we give a discretion which can imply a moral permission for certain kinds of data processing and sharing that might otherwise be morally problematic. Since delivery of the coaching, encouragement and requests for information occur via the technology, this is the most natural object of trust. Third, trust provides the basis for a distinctive approach to the ethics of designing behavior change technologies, in which the designer’s role is to invite the user to trust the technology and at the same time to avoid the risk of “over-trust” and pathological trust. People need to see, or at least to be able to find out easily, whether advice from the technology is based on reliable expert information. There is a world of possibilities for making reliable cues and information available in the world around the person, and within the technology.